InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth tutorial on how he rooted and upgraded his Motorola Cliq XT, one of many Android phones made infamous for not receiving further Android updates beyond 1.5. 'It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with twists and turns I describe here in order to help those who wish to embark on a similar journey,' Yegulalp writes. 'Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it. '

I have a Motorola i1, which came with Android 1.5, and which I bought because it was the only Android phone available for Boost Mobile (Sprint's pay-as-you-go division). It also (as far as I know) happens to be the only Android phone with iDEN (push-to-talk) functionality, which Boost/Sprint integrated into the standard Android build. I don't care even a little bit about iDEN, since I never, ever, use it, nor is there any possibility that I will in the future. But because of it, none of the ROM-making groups have even tried to support upgrading the i1 to a more recent Android version, as far as I have seen.

Caveat emptor, I guess. On the plus side, this is my first smartphone, so I don't really know what I'm missing out on.

Caveat emptor, I guess. On the plus side, this is my first smartphone, so I don't really know what I'm missing out on.

Quite a lot actually. I was in a similar situation as you, with nearly the same phone as in the article (Motorola Cliq). The official 2.1 update allowed me to run apps like Amazon Kindle and such, but it was slow and buggy, and ate the battery in half a day. I tried CyanogenMod and it worked great for the most part, but the phone's hardware just couldn't really handle the load overall. But, the fact that I was able to run 2.x-only apps more than made up for it. It's not quite Windows 95 vs Windows 7, but it is a drastic difference.

Since you are already on one of Sprint's prepaid arms, you may want to consider moving over to Virgin Mobile, where you can get a 2.1 or 2.2 device for under $200, and you will probably be able to port your number with no problem. You'll have the same coverage since it's the same carrier really, and you'll probably pay less too. I considered them when the ATT/Tmo merger was announced, but I think I will stick it out with Tmo and see if it's still decent after March 2012.